Chuseok Travels

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Hey everyone,

Oops I definitely meant to write this last weekend. As they say, time flies when you’re having fun!

I mentioned in my last post that this past week was Chuseok, Korea’s version of Thanksgiving. Because it is one of the major national holidays, we had the whole week off (to be fair, we only get Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off for our winter holidays… Not even a few days around the holidays, but only the days themselves). Having so much time off was wonderful, but I must admit the timing was a bit annoying for my coworker and myself, as we hadn’t yet been paid before the holiday. Actually, our payday fell within the holiday week, but since the banks were closed all week (and this Monday) due to the national holiday, our paychecks were unfortunately postponed. Because of this, Mpho (the other foreign teacher) and I were unable to go to Jeju like we had hoped we could, but I will not give up so easily! I will definitely find an opportunity to go while I’m here!

Although I didn’t get to go to Jeju, I did go to Busan for the first half of the week like I had planned. I stayed with Julia, my roommate from the Seoul orientation weekend, and we had a blast walking the city and seeing all of the sights.

On Saturday I woke up way too early, after making the mistake of going to bed way too late. Mpho and I traveled to the bus station together, but hopped on busses going different directions. The bus to Busan takes about three hours, which isn’t terrible considering how nice the long distance busses are, and how reasonably priced (My bus ticket was about $25, give or take). Julia and I had a bit of a hiccup meeting up once I arrived, as she had thought I was arriving by high-speed train, so she had gone to the KTX station, while I was actually at the bus terminal, which was across the city. After some scattered communication across poor public wifi, we decided to meet at one of the stations around the halfway point, and to wander around the area to see if we could find food. Once we actually met up at the chosen station, we walked around the surrounding area for about half an hour before giving up and going back into the connected department store to find food. The area surrounding the exit we took had very few food options, and what food there was was more or less all seafood, which neither of us eat. There were, however, a lot of medical offices/buildings, but it wasn’t until later that we realized we had ended up in the one neighborhood that is famously called “medical street.” But no fear! We found some great pho in the shopping mall, and followed our meal up with some lovely mango bingsu, which is like milky ice shavings. Picture a sno-cone but in a bowl, and more rich and fluffy. I’m not describing it well; you should probably just Google it if you’re interested. Just know that it’s a super tasty dessert and I definitely recommend it!

Anyway, we weren’t really sure what we should do, but I had picked up a map of Busan at the bus terminal while I was trying to figure out where in the city Julia was. One of the locations decently close to where we were was a lighthouse on an island, which you can take a boat out to. It looked interesting, so we decided to hop on a bus and go. We arrived too late to actually get on a boat to the island, but the area was still very scenic so we wandered the area a bit. One of the attractions was a skybridge, which is a glass bottom bridge. Although I’m afraid of heights, it was cool to watch as you walked further and further over the edge of the cliff, until you were finally standing over the water. The sun was setting by that time, so we also got the benefit of seeing the sun begin to set over the ocean, which was gorgeous.

On Sunday, we met up with Bryan, my other friend from Seoul, who also lives in Busan. We definitely made the most of our day by walking two different beaches and their surrounding areas, and then going to the location of Busan’s International Film Festival, which acts as a cinema during the off season. We were originally planning on visiting the Spa/bathhouse in the shopping mall next door, but their sign said people with tattoos weren’t allowed. (We found out later that that rule only applies to Koreans, and not to foreigners, so it’s a bummer that we didn’t go, but I didn’t want to risk getting thrown out.)

Julia worked on Monday, so we went out in the morning to walk around the EcoPark near her house and explore the neighborhood for a few hours before she had to leave for the day. While she was gone, I definitely took full advantage and tried to catch up on some sleep. For some reason, Bryan agreed to meet us in Julia’s neighborhood for dinner, even though it took him almost an hour and a half to get there. Both Julia and Bryan live in the northern part of Busan, and on a map it doesn’t look like they’re very far at all, but I guess there are no roads that go directly between their neighborhoods, so he had to go pretty far south to go west and then back up north. But he did come meet with us, so we found a place to get Korean BBQ, which was great, even though we had some troubles trying to order off the all-Korean menu. After dinner, we went back to Julia’s apartment and played Uno and Guess Who until 2 in the morning. As much fun as touring around a new city can be, I also genuinely enjoy playing card games or whatnot with a few friends, and just spending time getting to know one another better.

We had originally planned to spend Tuesday taking a bus tour that would bring us to parts of the city that we hadn’t yet visited, but when we tried to look it up again the morning of to check prices and times, we discovered that we had found an old tour that they didn’t actually offer anymore. So that plan had to be scrapped. Instead, we visited Busan Tower, spent a couple of hours in a Trick-eye museum, and went to see the famous fish market. We didn’t actually go up the tower; it was more like we went, saw it, and left. Not super exciting, but one of those places you kind of have to visit in a new city. The Trick-eye museum was definitely fun, though. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be as large as it was, but there were a decent number of rooms and images that we were able to interact with. Part of the fun was trying to figure out how we were supposed to pose with some of the images, especially the ones that didn’t have example photos next to them, or the ones where you had to contort your body so that it would look a certain way.

While the Trick-eye museum was a lot of fun, I definitely can’t say the same about the fish market. Thank god we didn’t stay long, but we were there long enough for me to be scarred for life seeing some of the fish being butchered right there, sometimes while still alive. I will be the first to tell you that I am squeamish about blood and any sort of violence, so I can confidently say the fish market was my least favorite part of the trip.I also just think that sea creatures are kind of weird and generally gross, so that definitely didn’t help. After finally leaving the fish market, we headed over to the part of town where Julia and I had met up on the first day. Turns out there is a huge shopping/restaurant district near that subway stop; we had just gone out the wrong way when we went on Saturday. It was a bummer we had missed it, because there were almost too many food options. After a great dinner of fried rice, we walked around the area for a bit, and ended up stopping to listen to some street performers. They were three college-aged guys who were really good, although their rebellious image belied the ballads they were singing. Bryan was less interested, so he went home, but Julia and I stayed and listened for a good hour or so. Definitely a happy end to an unfortunate beginning.

Wednesday was my last day in Busan, so Julia and I took a slower morning, then went to get some lunch in the district we had eaten dinner in the night before. We found some awesome fried chicken at a super chill restaurant, which was really nice. We had some time before I had to go, so we wandered into what looked like a small UFO catcher shop but was surprisingly deep, and actually opened out on the other side and even had one of the spinning wheel rides, like the ones you find at fairs. Unfortunately, we dallied just a bit too long, and the subway was just a bit slower than I expected, so I arrived at the bus terminal exactly 2 minutes before my bus was supposed to leave. There was no way I would make it to the bus in time, so I had to cancel my ticket (thank god for the internet, right?), and buy a new one, which meant I was stuck at the bus terminal for something like 3 hours. On top of that, they announced last minute that the bus was running 30 minutes late, so I arrived home a lot later than I had expected. Luckily, I did make the last bus home, so I didn’t have to pay for a taxi, which was nice.

I had planned on spending Thursday and Friday hanging out with one of my Korean coworkers, but she canceled on me last-minute, so I just kind of hung out in my neighborhood and took it easy. So that was my week off, and now things are back to normal until November, when my parents will come visit me!

Ah, I did start teaching a couple of new classes, since some of the eighth graders had their midterms before Chuseok, and are now back on their normal study schedules. Of course, each of those classes offers their own new challenges, so I decided to ask their Korean teacher if she had any advice for me. She told me that she had asked her students, and they actually liked my first class with them, and that they thought my pronunciation was quite easy to understand. She also told me she was impressed that I had gotten the boys to also speak in class (there is CCTV in every classroom and a monitor behind the front desk), so that was definitely nice to hear! I 100% spend more time than I should worrying about what my students think since I’m so inexperienced, so having that feedback directly from one of the Korean teachers. I also had a nice talk with my boss on Friday, when she asked me about one of the new textbooks I just started and what I thought of it. She told me that she is interested in my feedback on the textbooks, and also mentioned that she thinks it would be good for me to work on essay writing with my students once a month, which was something I had mentioned before break. So I’m happy to report that things are going pretty well on the teaching front!

That’s all I have for now, and I hope everything is going well for everyone at home! Until next time!

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Photos

We found Haeundae Beach!
This is the most popular beach for tourists, so in the summer it is supposed to be PACKED. Since it was the offseason, there were probably less than 200 people.

Steak Jobs
Bryan refused to eat there, so Julia and I went back the next day but it was closed :(

Freshest seafood around
The whole first floor is fresh seafood, and the second floor is seating. You can choose what you want, they butcher it right there, and bring it up for you to eat. *shudders*

Comments

[Judy]

Your blogs
Katie - I know Terry always comments on your blogs but know that I always read & enjoy them too! Judy

[katiekate]

Re: Your blogs
Thanks Judy!